The Perplexed Minds of Teenagers – Page 4 – Licensed Mental Health Counselor

The Perplexed Minds of Teenagers, Uncategorized

Trying to Understand Teenagers Part I: Psychosocial Development

31 May 20121 Jun 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

According to Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, during the ages of 12 to 18, teenagers are mostly focused on the questions “Who am I?” and “What do I believe and stand for?”

Identity versus confusion is thought to be the psychosocial crisis that teens are dealing with and many of us will probably agree that the teen years are full of trying out different roles and groups of friends to see where we fit in. This is natural and healthy as it helps us develop a sense of self, independence, a sense of belonging and a sense of individualism. If dealt with in an unhealthy way, this stage leads to feelings of confusion, and insecurity about themselves and where they fit into the world. At its worst it can lead to social and psychological impairments such as personality disorders, mood disorders, eating disorders and substance abuse.

Social relationships become the outmost important things to teenagers, which again is natural because humans are social beings and we need to learn how to get along with others and work together, but often times teens will put such great importance into their social relationships that everything else takes a back seat including familial relationships and academics. I see teens all the time whose biggest concern to them is their three month old relationship and not their failing grades and trying to get them to understand what should be important to them is more likely to give me gray hairs than it is to change thier point of view. Teens often sacrifice their relationship with parents to fulfill their needs for social relationships and usually don’t quite understand why we adults won’t just leave them alone to do what they want to do. A teenage girl I work with in individual and family counseling often cries to me that she just wants her mom to leave her alone and stop being worried about her. This young girl has been brought home at two in the morning by the police on a school night when her mom thought she was asleep, has been caught drinking and smoking marijuana and is failing school, yet she wants her mom to just let her “live my life”. This young girl is currently suspended from school after being caught having sexual contact with a boy in a restroom on campus.

It is natural for teens to try on different roles, friends, activities and behaviors to see what fits them and what doesn’t. This at times can be scary for those of us who watch the teens we know and love morph into and out of different roles and characters on their quest of finding their own identity and sense of direction.

With healthy and appropriate encouragement, reinforcement and support during this stage, teens will emerge with a strong sense of who they are, a feeling of independence, confidence and control over their lives. Those who come out of this stage unsure of who they are, what they want and what they believe are at a higher risk of developing the psychological impairments mentioned above as well as continue to feel insecure and confused about who they are into their adult years.

The Perplexed Minds of Teenagers

Teen Mom Wants to Have Another Baby ASAP

29 May 201229 May 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

What if your 18 year old daughter who is in the 11th grade of high school, already has a two year old child, told you she was planning on having another child by her new boyfriend in order to not be selfish?

Working with teenagers it’s rarely anything I see or hear these days that shock me, however, there are plenty of things I see and hear that leave me dumbfounded, including when one of my favorite teenage clients, who already has a child, told me that she plans to stop taking her birth control so she can get pregnant by her new boyfriend of only about three months. What?!?!

She told me that she thought it was UNFAIR to her son that he didn’t have a sibling and unfair to her new boyfriend that she didn’t have a child by him and that she felt like she was being selfish to everyone by WAITING until the right time (oh, let’s say after she finished high school, started a career, got married) to have another child. I sat listening to her, almost hoping that I had falling off into a daydream and that this was just all part of my imagination, but it wasn’t. This high school junior, soon to be senior, with one child at home already was telling me that she was planning on getting pregnant again as soon as possible! She is already raising this child without the father’s involvement and I shouldn’t say she is raising her child because her parents are actually the ones taking care of her and her current child, yet she wants to go and get pregnant again!

I know part of the psychology of why she wants to get pregnant again is to keep her current boyfriend around. She is thinking that if she gets pregnant by her current beau, they will stay together forever. I am sure she had that same delusional fantasy with her current child’s father who she hasn’t seen in over two years. You would think she would have learned, but the delusional, fantasy world and mind of a teenager is a hard shell to crack, no matter how many times the world gets dropped on it.

As I listened to her, I actually felt a great deal of heartache for her because she was about to go and do something dumb… at least in my professional opinion. The chances of her being 18 with two kids, barely a high school degree, and being successful aren’t in her favor, especially coupled with her history of alcohol and drug use and her impulsive behavior that often leads her to be in dangerous situations.

I tried and hope I spoke some sense into her. I told her that she isn’t being selfish by waiting for the right time (and person) to have another child. I told her that it is OKAY for her to be selfish when it comes to her life. A lot of times we are told so many times about not being selfish that we forget that sometimes being selfish is a form of self-care and self-preservation. I also told her that it wouldn’t be fair to her, her current child or her future children if she once again got pregnant by a man who wouldn’t be around to help her raise the child(ren) they produced together. I definitely tried to convince her that waiting until after high school, after college (which she plans to attend), and hopefully after getting married, would be the time for her to have more children if she so chose to do that. Being a high school senior next year with two kids her and her parents are raising together is not the situation she wants to be in.

I really hope I convinced her that having a child right now, with a guy she’s only known for three months, is not a rational decision, but a large majority of the teenage mind functions irrationally. Their brains are just wired differently at this age and we’ll explore that in a future post. The bottom line is, every high school girl I’ve worked with that got pregnant to keep a boy NEVER ends up with that boy more than a year or so later. Does it happen? I’m sure it does, but I haven’t seen it. Still, it doesn’t stop them from thinking otherwise and even if they already had a child and that child’s father disappeared shortly after the birth of the child, some of them will still be convinced, as this young lady is, that it won’t happen again.

This isn’t the first time I had to deal with something similar to this. Not too long ago one of my high school clients who had a baby less than a year ago, wanted to have another baby right away because that is what her boyfriend (the babys’ father) wanted. A month or so later they broke up because he wasn’t helping her take care of the baby they already had. Imagine if she would have gotten pregnant with a second child like she wanted.

The Perplexed Minds of Teenagers

Is Pretending to be Pregnant a Mental Illness?

14 May 201217 Sep 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHC166 Comments

In The Pregnancy Project: A Memoir, Gaby Rodriguez faked her own pregnancy as a social experiment, but teenage girls pretending to be pregnant is not a new phenomenon.

Over the past three years I’ve grown more and more concerned about teenage girls pretending to be pregnant, the reasons they do this and the mental and social rewards and consequences of it. I have to wonder if part of this is because of shows like 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, but I also think that the alarming number of their peers who actually are pregnant or have kids has an effect on them. Why would a teenage girl want to put up with the scrutiny and criticism that comes along with being pregnant in high school? This is what I think:

1. Attention

Some of these young girls are starving for attention no matter if it’s positive or negative. Perhaps they see all the attention their peers or siblings got when they were pregnant and crave some of that same attention. I often see that their friends, while at times judgmental, often start bonding with the young girl in a nurturing way, something that she doesn’t get normally from them.

2. To Keep a Boy Interested

I think this may be the most common reason young girls pretend to be pregnant. I see it played out over and over again each year in the high school I work at. A relationship ends or is on the break of ending and all of a sudden the young girl blurts out she’s pregnant or thinks she’s pregnant. This usually sends the young man into a panic and even if he’s skeptical, he tends to at least try to stay on her good side until the pregnancy is confirmed or denied. Like a lot of young teens who pretend to be pregnant, these ladies may go through great lengths to convince their boyfriends (ex-boyfriend) that they are pregnant and often times in the process, continue to try to really get pregnant. These drastic attempts to keep a boy are seldom successful.

3. Biology

Evolutional psychology may say that it is normal for young teens to pretend to be pregnant since it’s in their biology to want to conceive children. During my research it appears that pretending to be pregnant is to some extend normal, but I think what is abnormal is the way that some young adults go about pretending to be pregnant. Perhaps pretending to be pregnant to yourself is normal, while pretending to be pregnant and in effect lying to your friends/boyfriend is more on the abnormal end of the scale. However, if it is to some extend normal to pretend to be pregnant, can it ever go so far that it can be classified as a mental illness. To what extent does a young girl have to go to inorder convince people she is pregnant, before she moves into the realm of psychopathology?

More recently, Annette Morales Rodriguez was arrested and suspected of stalking, beating and choking to death a pregnant woman and using an xacto knife to remove her unborn child because she had had four miscarriages and had been faking her pregnancy.

One source said that she panicked as her fake due date approached and she had to produce a baby. She was willing to kill in order to “have” a child.

Pretending to be Pregnant as a Mental Illness

I have a client I’ve known for three years and each year she “gets pregnant”. I was originally referred to her when she “gave birth” to a premature baby and was back at school the next day showing pictures of “this baby” in neo-intensive care. One of her teachers was concerned about her physical and mental health and referred her to me. When I met with her she told me that the baby had died and I spend several weeks helping her get through the grieving process and even helped her with a memorial ceremony. A few months later I found out that this was all a lie. She was never pregnant. The pictures of the baby in NIC-U had come from Google Images, and this wasn’t the first time she had pretended to be pregnant. The extend to which this young girl went through to convince people she was pregnant and had given birth to a premature baby that died concerned me. I thought surely she was mentally ill, but I let it go as the next year her problems turned to the more normal problems teenage girls come and see me about (boys, family, school, friends, drugs).

And then this year she said she was pregnant again. This time I believed her (call me gullible, but I tend to believe people until I have evidence not to) because from her pretending to be pregnant last year, I felt like she wanted to get pregnant, and from my experience, young girls that talk a lot about being pregnant, pretend to be pregnant, and are sexually active, they usually end up pregnant within twelve months. Well this young girl started to gain weight, starting looking pregnant (even wore too small clothing to enhance the effect) up to a certain extend when she suddenly stopped “growing”. She claimed to feel the baby moving and said she went to doctor appointments, but would never let her friends go with her. She told her boyfriend she was pregnant and all of her friends, but not her family. She even went as far as to have her friends plan a baby shower. I offered over and over to help her break the news to her mom, but she refused and then one day her best friend came to my office in tears, telling me that she thinks the young girl is “crazy” because she really isn’t pregnant and keeps pretending to be pregnant. Her best friend told me that all of her friends and even her boyfriend are concerned for her, but they haven’t confronted her out of fear that she really is mentally ill.

After an intense session with the young girl she admitted to me that she really wasn’t pregnant, but couldn’t tell me why she kept pretending to be pregnant and was still planning on letting her friends and boyfriend think she was pregnant. As of Friday she was still planning her baby shower. That lead me to truly believe that this girl has a mental illness, but if so, what?

Factitious Disorders

The first thing that came to my mind was that she had a factitious disorder. Factitious disorders occur when a person acts like they have an illness and purposely produces symptoms of that illness. They may go as far as contaminating urine samples, manipulating documents and taking substances to make themselves ill. The benefits they seek usually are attention, sympathy, nurturance and mercy. The old term for factitious disorder is Munchausen Syndrome, and many of you have probably heard of Munchausen by proxy, which is when the person uses someone else, usually a child or elderly person, to produce the sick symptoms of an illness unto, often times with alarming and deadly results. But does a young girl who continues to pretend to be pregnant and goes to great lengths to convince people she is pregnant suffering from a factitious disorder? Through all my research I couldn’t find a definite answer, but this as of right now is my number one guess.

Personality Disorders

Borderline Personality Disorder

I also have to wonder if this girl and others like her may have some type of personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder is very popular these days, but I have only known about three people I would diagnose with borderline personality disorder and only one of them have pretended to be pregnant in a very similar manner to the young girl I’ve been talking about. I also don’t think this young girl qualifies to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but it is possible.

Histrionic Personality Disorder

People with histrionic personality disorder are always seeking attention and can be very inappropriately seductive, have exaggerated emotions and feel shallow. I’m not sure if this describes the young lady I’m talking about either.

Dependent Personality Disorder

People who have dependent personality disorder are dependent psychologically on other people. Pretending to be pregnant would increase the likelihood that the people this person is dependent on will be more nurturing and present, but from knowing this girl I highly doubt she has dependent personality disorder, but it may explain why some other young ladies pretend to be pregnant.

Psychopathy

Some people are just psychopaths as defined by:

lack of remorse or empathy
shallow emotions
manipulativeness
lying
egocentricity
glibness
low frustration tolerance
episodic relationships
parasitic lifestyle
persistent violation of social norms

Is it necessary that I diagnose this young lady and those like her? Probably not. I prefer not to diagnose clients unless I have to or it is a diagnoses that is literally screaming in my face. I don’t like labeling clients, but there are many reasons to give a diagnosis. Most insurance companies require a diagnosis and a diagnosis does help give a framework for developing a treatment plan. It is however, in my opinion, essential that I figure out what is driving this young girl and others like her to go through such great extents to pretend to be pregnant in hopes of helping them deal with whatever it is they are trying to get externally, and be able to give it to themselves so that they can develop into emotionally and mentally healthy adults.

If you have any opinions or if you’ve been through this or even pretended to be pregnant before, please comment. I would love to hear your story.

The Perplexed Minds of Teenagers

Does the Baby’s DNA Change if the Mother Has Sex with Another Guy While Pregnant?

14 Mar 201227 Mar 2012by Torey C. Richards, LMHC370 Comments

I’m a strong proponent of the “there are no stupid questions” rule (in most cases), but can I propose that there are stupid statements?

The other day, an 18 year old client of mine, who is about two months pregnant with her ex-boyfriend’s baby, told me that she hasn’t told her new boyfriend that she is pregnant because she plans on changing the baby’s DNA from her ex-boyfriend’s to her new boyfriend’s by having repeated, unprotected sex with him. I nearly passed out from the shock of her ignorance!

I explained to her that it doesn’t work like that and tried to give her a crash course in human reproduction, but she quickly dismissed me, saying that she had a cousin who did it before (the cousin was probably never pregnant the first time to begin with, but that’s another story). I was so appalled that I could’t even debate with her because apparently she knew more than I did. It just made me more concerned about our youth and our future!

I took the liberty of researching her absurd question and was shocked to find that many people have asked the same question on forums such as yahoo answers! Not only that, but they asked such questions such as, “Does swallowing semen change the baby’s DNA?” ! What is wrong with these people? I know part of the problem is that we took sex education out of schools, so now we have a whole generation of children being raised not knowing the basics of human reproduction, human sexuality and anatomy and they will soon be raising and educating kids of their own! Scary! They’re not even concerned with real things that can “change” a baby’s DNA such as the mother’s diet and toxins such as smoking cigarette’s while pregnant. These things can alter DNA and make a child more prone to things like asthma, obesity, illnesses and allergies, but they nor can anything else turn “Mike’s baby” into “John’s baby” just because the mother and “Mike” no longer are together.

Few things scare me more than the state of our children and our future and the fact that they think they know everything when they at times don’t seem to understand the essentials of life.